“Ensuring the Effectiveness of Development
Cooperation”
Transparency and Accountability
for Ensuring Quality and
Effectiveness of Development
Cooperation
Josef Moser
Secretary General of INTOSAI
Preconditions for Ensuring Quality
and Effectiveness in Development
Cooperation
Accountability mechanisms for ensuring quality
and effectiveness of development cooperation at
local, national, regional and global levels are key
and only possible if:
•
transparency in development cooperation,
•
accountability of development actors and
•
a true and fair view of public development
resources
are in place.
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Transparency and Accountability
SAIs can create the necessary transparency and
accountability because:
•
SAIs can provide independent, unbiased and
reliable information on executive activities
including development cooperation to
governments, parliaments and citizens
•
SAIs enhance transparency and accountability:
•
Financial audits – insight in the financial situation of the
state;
•
Compliance audits – make irregularities visible;
•
Performance audits – reveal information on efficiency,
effectiveness and economy of all government areas.
Slide 3
Preconditions for Effective Work
of SAIs
But:
SAIs can unfold their full potential to create
transparency, accountability and a true and fair
view of the state budgets only if essential
preconditions are fulfilled:
•
Independence of SAIs;
•
Capacity of SAIs;
•
Adequate accounting systems.
Explicitly underlined by the UN General Assembly
Resolution A/66/209.
Slide 4
Obstacles for SAIs
Currently we face a series of obstacles for SAIs to
fully unfold their potential:
Lack of transparency and accountability due to:
•
Lack of legal, financial and organizational
independence of SAIs from governments;
•
Obstacles to disseminate and publish audit
reports;
•
Lack of a comprehensive mandate to audit
government performance;
Lack of possibilities to provide a formal audit
opinion on government accounts because of
shortcomings of rules for accounting, reporting
Slide 5
and monitoring of public and state budgets.
•
Necessary Measures for Better
Accountability Mechanisms
For improving accountability mechanisms at local,
national, regional and global levels, the following
measures are necessary:
1.
Strengthening the independence of SAIs necessary precondition for an effective audit
quality and the effectiveness of development
cooperation at the national level
2.
Building capacity of SAIs for auditing
performance of governments and state budgets;
3.
Improvement and harmonization of public
accounting in terms of accrual accounting
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Recommendations to Move
Forward
It is key to include these three essential elements
in the SDGs:
1.
Independence of SAIs
2.
Capacity building of SAIs
3.
Improvement of the public accounting systems
(accrual accounting)
Slide 7
Appeal
•
Now: Unique opportunity to set the stage for really
effective and transparent accountability
mechanisms for SDG implementation at all levels.
•
Task for all of us:
•

Enhancing accountability mechanisms for quality
and effectiveness of development cooperation by

Including independence and capacity building of
SAIs and the improvement of public accounting
systems in the SDGs.
This would eliminate the lack of transparency,
accountability and national ownership.
Slide 8
Thank you very much!
Slide 9